Hostility in 1980 turns to acceptance in 2012

UAlbany student returns to talk about her experiences as a transgender female

Denise Norris, a former UAlbany student and a transgender woman, talks about programs to assist LGBT students, on Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012, at the University of Albany in Albany, N.Y. (Cindy Schultz / Times Union)

Denise Norris, a former UAlbany student and a transgender woman, talks about programs to assist LGBT students, on Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012, at the University of Albany in Albany, N.Y. (Cindy Schultz / Times

Denise Norris, a former UAlbany student and a transgender woman, talks about programs to assist LGBT students, on Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012, at the University of Albany in Albany, N.Y. (Cindy Schultz / Times Union)

Denise Norris, a former UAlbany student and a transgender woman, talks about programs to assist LGBT students, on Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012, at the University of Albany in Albany, N.Y. (Cindy Schultz / Times

ALBANY — It was a hostile environment for a transgender student at the University at Albany in 1980 when Denise Norris arrived as a freshman from Garden City, Long Island struggling with issues of gender identity.

It was much safer in that era for 6-foot-4 Dave Norris, as she was known then, to remain in the closet. Cross-dressing wasn't the sort of thing you casually brought up with four male roommates assigned to share a suite on Dutch Quad.

"There was so much shame. I couldn't be Denise," recalled Norris, who dropped out of school as a sophomore in an emotional meltdown.

On Tuesday, Norris returned to UAlbany for the first time in 31 years and found both its physical campus and acceptance of gender diversity greatly changed.

"Everything looks so much different today, especially seeing openly transgender people on campus," said Norris, 50, a senior analyst with Accenture, a Fortune Global 500 management consulting company with nearly 250,000 employees worldwide. Norris met with students, faculty and staff and gave a lecture about her personal experiences as a transgender female. She also made a pitch about how corporations can prosper by recruiting workers from the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender or LGBT community.

Norris came to UAlbany to pursue a degree in atmospheric sciences while harboring a deep secret. Beginning at age 5, she had feelings she couldn't explain when she played with her mother's makeup. She started wearing women's clothes at 15 and snuck out of the house late at night dressed as the opposite gender. It was an illicit thrill she shared with very few.

Norris did not bring women's clothes to UAlbany and gave no outward signals, but the dorm mates sensed something was odd.

"I think I smelled differently because I got teased a lot," Norris said. "They could tell my maleness wasn't real. There was something about me that wasn't authentic."

Norris said she found no psychological or support services for LGBT students in 1981. "It was a dark period," she said. A self-described "science geek," the gender confusion led to academic failure. Norris dropped out after the fall semester as a sophomore.

Transitioning to life as a transgender female was difficult for Norris, who was arrested at 15 for "impersonating a female." She was quickly released and the charge was dropped, but her parents were outraged and would not discuss their son's efforts to change gender.

In 1992, three years after beginning hormone therapy and living full-time as a woman, Norris completed gender reassignment surgery at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.

"I was finally relieved of my shame and started blossoming," Norris said. She went by the gender-neutral D.A. Norris and was hired as an information technology manager with a not-for-profit in Manhattan. She became a transgender advocate and legally changed her name and gender. She was hired by Accenture in 2009 and works from home in the Catskills. Norris fathered a child during a brief marriage that ended in divorce. She is now a single woman and lives with her 25-year-old daughter, Courtney.

The landscape for transgender people is slowly improving, she said. "More and more companies are practicing diversity and inclusion in their hiring," Norris said. "The best way to help transgender people is to hire them."

The visit by Norris was sponsored in part by UAlbany's Gender and Sexuality Center, a cramped office in the Campus Center opened two years ago. It started with an average of 10 students dropping by each day to more than 80 currently.

"We're a beacon and a safe place, offering services for every spectrum of person," said Courtney D'Allaird, a 2009 UAlbany graduate who is now a master's degree student and a full-time staff person. D'Allaird is a transgender male who graduated in 2002 from Scotia-Glenville High School.

There is no firm estimate of the number of LGBT students at UAlbany, but there may be as many as 1,500, or roughly 10 percent of its 15,000 student body. A draw for prospective LGBT students is the fact that Harvey Milk is a UAlbany alumnus, class of 1951. The slain gay rights leader was doubly discriminated against as a student: a closeted homosexual and a Jew who joined the only fraternity that accepted Jews at the time, Kappa Beta.

D'Allaird's office features a large poster of Milk describing his UAlbany ties and a quote from him: "Hope will never be silent."

More Information

The discrimination Milk and Norris faced in their respective eras on campus has not been entirely erased on the UAlbany campus in 2012.

"We didn't solve the issue overnight by putting up a rainbow," D'Allaird said. "We've got to keep working on this issue."